Bringing GIS to the masses.

So with Rice Tea now done, it’s time to start on my next project. It’s a piece of software this time; one which aims to bring GIS to the masses.

The idea is this: you’re a high school kid, or a university kid, or a worker in an office – and you need to produce a map. If you’re not in a field that’s familiar with geomatics software, what are you going to use? Photoshop. The Gimp. MS Paint. A screendump of Google Earth.

And your map will still look shitty. It won’t have a North Arrow, a  legend, or a map border. You won’t be able to combine datasets, or plot on XY data. That’s where my software comes in: it gives an easy way to create maps, for non-GIS people.

The focus will be on making map-making easy and accessible to audiences, much in the same way that Excel has made tabulating data accessible to audiences. That’s where it differentiates itself from other free products such as the excellent MapMaker and GRASS.

The program will be both free as in speech, and free as in beer.